Thailand moves up in Russia’s sights

“We started this precise project-oriented development from Thailand and we hope to get a positive experience here and then multiply the benefits for the region,” Gruzdev said. “We have started to learn how to work here with partners and we see that, in certain sectors. Thailand may be considered a hub in Asean. There are a lot of fields to explore and that’s why we were here,” said Gruzdev, who led a trade mission to Thailand.
In regards to the country’s Eastern Economic Corridor, Gruzdev said that Russia was ready to take part in infrastructure development, including for a high speed railway, port development and air traffic control system for U-Tapao airport.
“We want to get to know more about EEC projects in detail. We also will go on a side visit there [today],” the minister said.
“All these fields that mention transport, logistic, energy, biotech, pharmaceutical, medical equipment, financing, robotic, IT, and Internet technology, we are interested in. We need to explore, we need to see. We hope that with this business mission we will let Thai businesses learn more about Russian investment and opportunity. We have some investors from Thailand who have invested in Russia, the most famous is CP Group.
“But we think there are a lot of new opportunities that it can be jointly implemented with Thai partners so we also will inform our Thai friends about Russian development, Russian opportunity, and Russian investment projects.
"For a lot of other things, we believe Russian companies have the components and competence to complete and have very high quality services that can be delivered.”
He said Russian-Thai relation are developing, but there is still more room for improvement.
“We think that we need to explore new areas like in petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, robotics, IT and cyber security. Russia is a s leading country in term of cybersecurity, technology and software,” Gruzdev said.
”But we are talking not only about cybersecurity, but also e-government, enterprise and management systems. We have a lot of solutions that we plan to discuss these with Thai partners.”
Gruzdev said that Asean is a key trading bloc and an important member of the international community.
Gruzdev led a Russian business mission pm a visit to Bangkok to explore investment opportunities in the Eastern Economic Corridor and had discussions on the subject with Thai officials and business figures on on mutual investments yesterday.
The delegation comprised representatives of more than 50 leading Russian companies working in such areas as transport and logistics, infrastructure development, finance, medicine and biotechnologies and energy. Among them are Sukhol Civil Aircraft Company, Rostec, the State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom Russian Railways and JSC Helicopters of Russia.
Special emphasis has been made on Russian competitive strengths, in particular defence industry, IT and digital technologies as well as cyber security and solutions.
Thai partners may benefit from the participation of Kaspersky Internet Security and Group-IB in the business mission, the minister said.
Representatives of Russian companies shared their views and disclosed plans for Russian-Thai cooperation with Thai journalists at the forum.
Trade and economic ties are an important part of relations between Russia and Thailand, the minister said. The Joint Russian-Thai commission on bilateral cooperation remains an important mechanism of bilateral interaction. 
 Denis V. Manturov, chairman of the Russian part of the joint commission, paid an official visit to Thailand twice – in 2013 and 2015.
Within the framework of the Joint Commission operate two sub-commissions: on trade and economic cooperation (the last meeting was held in November 2014 in Moscow) and on agricultural cooperation (the last meeting took place in July 2015 in Moscow).
There is a regular exchange of trips of business missions of the two countries.
According to Kaspersky Lab, digitalisation and connectivity bring enormous economic and societal benefits to Thailand. But these also bring numerous cyber risks, especially to critical infrastructures and large enterprises. Kaspersky Lab brings its global expertise to protect essential services, the company said.
“It is Kaspersky Lab's vision and commitment to building the cybersecurity defence from top to bottom,” the company said.
“Therefore, to support and to create the bilateral collaboration with Thailand on a grand scale will be answering our call to fight the cybercrime globally. We are looking forward to moving this campaign into practice as soon as possible with both public and private sectors which will contribute to Thailand 4.0 and its national agenda.
“This only affirms the vision of Thailand of its maturity and well understanding of the global issue of cybersecurity.”